Food Poisoning Traceback Race is On
Some segments of the food industry have been required since 2005 to be able to trace foods "one step forward, one step back," but not farms or restaurants. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Lindsey Layton, the new Food Safety Modernization Act requires the FDA to launch pilot projects by September, then report results to Congress and issue more specific rules by 2013. Exactly what systems will ultimately look like, how they will work and how much they will cost is unclear, but the private sector is buzzing with activity.
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Paul Chang, who leads the traceability initiative at IBM, said the company is basically taking the tracking system it uses for the pharmaceutical industry and adopting it to the food business. HarvestMark, based in California, has developed a two-dimensional bar code sticker that can be placed on individual fruits and vegetables or packaging. Shoppers can scan the sticker with a smartphone or go to the HarvestMark website and enter the number from the sticker to learn the path the food has taken and other information the farmer chooses to share, such as the harvest date. You can click a button and tell the farmer what you think of the produce, if you like.
The purpose behind the new technology is to quicken FDA, USDA and CDC tracebacks of food poisoning when there are outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter and other human pathogens. As Layton reminds her readers, the need for better traceability became clear after a national Salmonella outbreak in spring 2008 sickened more than 1,300 people. Initially, investigators at the FDA and the CDC identified tomatoes as the culprit, and warned the public against consuming them. But more than a month later, FDA investigators correctly identified the source of the outbreak as peppers from Mexico. The delay was partly because of poor record-keeping of the growers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers, FDA has said.
